Pastor Mike opens on the thing that once drove him out of the faith altogether: watching people treat being saved as the finish line, living like it didn't much matter what they did afterward. His counter, learned the long way back through sixteen years of atheism, is that faithfully living the way Jesus teaches simply makes life work — a way of living, not just a rescue from the past. Corey takes it to the Big Book's "design for living that works in rough going" and pushes it further: what if you don't wait for rough going, but pray consistently, in the good times too? They get honest about the pull of shortcuts, the ego that rebuilds itself quietly until the memory of the wreckage fades, and why staying low — feet planted with everyone else rather than talking down from the mountain — is where a person actually gets useful. It lands on Proverbs' promise that pride brings disgrace but wisdom comes with humility, and the reminder that though the results belong to God, the service is still ours to give.

The stone for today: God offers more than rescue from my past. He offers a way of living that works today.

Read today's full Daily Ripple at www.dailyripples.com — and we'd love to hear from you. Reach out any time at [email protected].

A way that works | design for living | grace and transformation | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | pride and humility | meeting people where they are | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery

Daily Ripples is a daily devotional reflection connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.

Pastor Mike and Corey sit with a question that runs underneath every choice: what's actually driving it? Corey brings an old-timer's line that's stuck with him for years — that all he has today are decisions to be made and appointments to be kept — and finds that when those decisions bend toward service, his life starts to look full regardless of what he does or doesn't get out of it. Pastor Mike anchors it in the Big Book's diagnosis on page 62, that selfishness and self-centeredness sit at the root of our troubles, and the plain first instruction that follows: we had to quit playing God. From there they get honest about fear as the engine underneath the need to control — how gripping something tighter only speeds its slipping away, and why you can't love someone and control them at the same time. It moves through the daily spot-check of watching for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear, the reminder that growth in understanding takes a lifetime so you'd best start now, and Galatians' call to walk by the Spirit.

The stone for today: What drives my life will eventually shape my actions, for good or for bad.

Read today's full Daily Ripple at www.dailyripples.com — and we'd love to hear from you. Reach out any time at [email protected].

What drives me | motives and self-examination | quit playing God | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | fear and control | daily spot-check inventory | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery

Daily Ripples is a daily devotional reflection connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.

Pastor Mike opens with a confession that reframes the whole conversation: people tell him he's a good listener, and he's quick to admit he isn't one by nature — it's a skill he had to acquire, partly because not listening once cost him dearly, and partly through the slow work of God, the program, and the steps. He and Corey dig into what real listening asks of us: setting expectations aside instead of deciding we already know someone's point, remembering that a reaction doesn't have to become a response, and the humbling truth that God often speaks through the very people we'd least expect — even the ones we don't much like. Corey brings his old sponsor Doug's hard-won wisdom, that there isn't enough time in a life to make every mistake yourself, so you'd better start learning from other people's. It lands on Proverbs' contrast between the fool who's right in his own eyes and the wise who listen to counsel, and the reminder that what we take in — the music, the media, the algorithms — quietly shapes the mind over time.

The stone for today: Wisdom grows when I stop insisting on my own way and become willing to learn from others.

Read today's full Daily Ripple at www.dailyripples.com — and we'd love to hear from you. Reach out any time at [email protected].

Learning to listen | wise counsel over first instinct | reaction versus response | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | God in unexpected people | guarding your thought life | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery

Daily Ripples is a daily devotional reflection connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.

Pastor Mike and Corey get into the daily mechanics of a faith that actually grows, and Corey — self-admittedly predictable — takes it straight to how he starts his morning. He walks through the on-awakening instructions from the Big Book, the value of reviewing the day behind and the day ahead, and why "each morning" means each morning, not whenever he happens to think about it. The conversation drifts, by their own cheerful admission, deep into prayer: the difference between rattling off a prayer lying in bed and getting down on his knees, and the moment it clicked for him that asking God into his day ought to come with the courtesy of some action on his end. Pastor Mike balances it with a pastor's caution — pointing to Jesus' warning about the Pharisees praying in public to be seen — landing on the line between showing someone a way and insisting it's the only way. Underneath it all runs the week's turn toward Steps Eight and Nine, and the reminder that faith without works is dead.

The stone for today: Faith grows when I welcome God into my daily life instead of keeping Him at a distance.

Read today's full Daily Ripple at www.dailyripples.com — and we'd love to hear from you. Reach out any time at [email protected].

Faith that takes root | starting the day with prayer | on awakening | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | faith without works | humility in prayer | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery

Daily Ripples is a daily devotional reflection connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.

Wave Book Study — Session One: The Forewords

Corey opens a new side project this week: a page-by-page walk through the Big Book, running alongside the daily show as its own study series. He starts where the book itself starts — before the Doctor's Opinion, before Bill's Story — with the set-aside prayer and the forewords most people flip right past. From there he digs into the details that reward slowing down: the first promise hiding in the title page's claim that thousands of men and women have recovered, why "recovered" is such a deliberate word, how the Doctor's Opinion once opened on page one before the forewords pushed it into Roman numerals, and the history of the Oxford Group's absolutes and six steps that eventually became the Twelve. Underneath the history runs the thread he keeps returning to — that his feelings are subjective and always changing, while a book that has worked for millions is something objective he can lean on, and that the real work of recovery is learning what's in these pages and then actually doing it.

A study offered in the spirit of one alcoholic sharing experience, strength, and hope with another.

Read along at home — and if this series speaks to you, we'd love to hear from you. Reach out any time at [email protected].

Big Book study | the forewords | history of Alcoholics Anonymous | Oxford Group roots | recovered vs. recovering | Dr. Silkworth | recovery literature | experience strength and hope | sobriety study | addiction recovery

Disclaimer: This Wave Book Study is an independent recovery study offered free of charge as a teaching aid. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or approved by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. (A.A.W.S.). Passages read and discussed are drawn from the book Alcoholics Anonymous ("The Big Book"), © A.A.W.S., Inc., and are used here for educational and discussion purposes with attribution. This study is not a substitute for the Big Book itself — we'd encourage you to get your own copy and read it. A.A.W.S. has not reviewed or approved this content, and the views expressed are those of the host alone.

Pastor Mike and Corey open the week on service, with Corey announcing up front that he's just here to be present today, not to co-host. The conversation circles a paradox they keep bumping into: the instinct to make service sound appealing — to convince someone into this way of life — quietly turns the whole thing into a pitch, when the real posture is simply "this is what I do, and if you want what I have, do what we do." Corey works through a distinction that reframes it for him: he's not calling someone or changing a stranger's tire on the roadside to get a result or to be seen doing it, but to seek God through the act itself — being in the God business rather than the results business. Pastor Mike ties it to Jesus separating the sheep from the goats in Matthew 25, where feeding the hungry and clothing the naked is counted as service done to Christ Himself, and lands on the Big Book's picture of heads in the clouds with God and feet planted firmly on earth, because that's where our fellow travelers are and where the work gets done. It closes where page 77 does: our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people about us — an old restatement of loving God and loving your neighbor.

The stone for today: God's work in my life is not only for my benefit but for the good of those around me.

Read today's full Daily Ripple at www.dailyripples.com — and we'd love to hear from you. Reach out any time at [email protected].

Shaped for service | seeking God through serving | maximum service to God and others | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | motives and ego | sheep and the goats | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery

Daily Ripples is a daily devotional reflection connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.

Sundays are Pastor Mike's, and this one pairs the Eighth and Ninth Steps with the feeding of the five thousand from Matthew 14. The hinge is a single line the disciples say when the crowd gets hungry and the day gets long: send them away. It sounds like the responsible call — it's late, there's no food, let everyone fend for themselves — but underneath the reasonable suggestion sits exhaustion, and a wish for the whole need to become someone else's problem. That's the amends trap exactly, dressed up as prudence: the excuse that lets us skip the hard conversation while calling it wisdom. Jesus answers — they need not go away, you give them something to eat — and then asks only for the five loaves already in their hands. The episode follows Jesus through four verbs from that miracle, take, bless, break, and give, and lands on a freeing truth: your amends will feel like far too little, and handing it over anyway is the whole point.

The stone for today: Making amends is not about easing my conscience but becoming willing to let God change my life.

Read today's full Daily Ripple at www.dailyripples.com — and we'd love to hear from you. Reach out any time at [email protected].

Willingness and amends | examining my motives | Eighth and Ninth Steps | feeding of the five thousand | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | doing the next right thing | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery

Daily Ripples is a daily devotional reflection connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.

Corey opens the month solo on a Saturday, and sets the frame for August: the show turns toward Step Eight and the making of amends. His anchor is a line from the Twelve and Twelve — the member's life actually depends on obedience to spiritual principles, and if he drifts too far, the penalty is sure and swift. Drawing on his years working with wires, he lands the point plainly: told that touching two of them together could kill him, he'd tape them off and cut the breaker without a second thought, yet somehow the spiritual instructions for living got a lot more resistance. From there he moves through the Big Book's insistence that the spiritual life is never a theory but something lived, James' warning against being a hearer who forgets his own face in the mirror, and the honest work of an inventory. It closes with the practical mechanics of his own amends process — name, contact, and what he did, written on an index card and sealed with the Seventh Step Prayer, because once it's on paper it stops being a theory and becomes real.

The stone for today: Spiritual truth only becomes real in my life when I choose to live it.

Read today's full Daily Ripple at www.dailyripples.com — and we'd love to hear from you. Reach out any time at [email protected].

Faith lived out | obedience to spiritual principles | Step Eight and making amends | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | faith without works | inventory and honesty | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery

Daily Ripples is a daily devotional reflection connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.

Corey opens on the Big Book's blunt line about the alcoholic as an extreme example of self-will run riot — "though he usually doesn't think so" — and asks the obvious follow-up: so how would I know when I'm in it? Pastor Mike's answer is honest, that the gap between running on self-will and catching it has just gotten shorter over time. From there the conversation turns to what it means to grow up performing faith without feeling it, why the Big Book asks a man to sit alone for a full hour, and how cleaning house is what turns fleeting moments of awe into something steadier. It closes on the Seventh Step Prayer as a call to action — grant me strength as I go out from here to do Your bidding — and the plain observation that the step right after seven is eight.

The stone for today: Serenity, courage, and wisdom are not ideas to admire, but a way of living each day.

Read today's full Daily Ripple at www.dailyripples.com — and we'd love to hear from you. Reach out any time at [email protected].

Living the Serenity Prayer | self-will run riot | Seventh Step prayer | faith without works | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | prayer and meditation | cleaning house | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery

Daily Ripples is a daily devotional reflection connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.

Corey opens with a thought experiment about walking into a room full of strangers who happen to have the cure for exactly what's killing you — and then refusing to pass it on to the next person who walks through the door. That's the tension of today's episode: what you've been given was never meant to stop with you. Pastor Mike takes it to Matthew 25's parable of the talents, read from the Message, where the servant who plays it safe and buries what he was given gets the harshest word in the whole story. The conversation turns toward faith without works being dead, why feelings are subjective but the literature isn't, and the plain difference between knowing what the book says and having actually done it.

The stone for today: What has been given to me is not meant to stop with me. It grows, deepens, and multiplies only when I am willing to give it away.

Read today's full Daily Ripple at www.dailyripples.com — and we'd love to hear from you. Reach out any time at [email protected].

Giving back what was given | faith and works | parable of the talents | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | carrying the message | community of faith | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery

Daily Ripples is a daily devotional reflection connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.